Replace 32GB mSATA with 24 GB?

[Jim.Alles]

Well, if nothing else, to provide some LOUD CONVERSATION to cover whatever that was,

sky-night, curious on your thoughts about getting a z4w, and using clonezilla to immediately swap it out with a 120gb SSD I have lying around (came with a laptop, which was immediately upgraded to 480). My home system is running an Atom D525 from 2013, and has a repurposed spinning rust disk that's two years older; it's coming up on time for a refresh.

I am going to play devils advocate (since I own one) what in the world do you want the wireless bit on a Z4W for?
I'll wait

[sky-knight]

I know I don't, it's garbage... no range, minimal configurability... the option simply sucks.

SDWan actually does a better job in that space, but it'll be a cold day in Satan's realm before I ever pay those extortion rates to use it. Seriously Untangle, I MERAKI is cheaper!

Amazon, Google, Apple, Unifi, all have superior products in this space that cost far less and perform far better.

Untangle is in an ugly space, surrounded by much larger fish. It can survive only if it focuses on what it's good at, and that is most definitely NOT wifi. And it's also apparently not SDWan routers.

[Jim.Alles]

Rob, - I agree with you (and more) but you didn't answer jcoehoorn's question I left for you to answer - so here are my thoughts on the repurposed SSD.

@jcoehoorn
Get the model number and Mfg. date on that take-out drive and scour the Interwebs for drive failures, bait-and-switch, and recalls. There were some spectacular ones!

I am not sure I would bother with Clonezilla, just do a fresh install (unless you want to tinker, to practice your skilz .

Beyond that, IMHO you should be good to go!

[sky-knight]

If you're wondering if the unit can accept a larger SSD, the answer is yes. But to know for certain which M.2 device to order, one would have to dismantle the appliance and get model numbers.

This is critical, because M.2 can be both SATA and NVME. Given Untangle just got EFI support with Beta v16, AND you need EFI to boot to NVME I'm pretty sure these are SATA M.2 devices... but it never hurts to look.

I don't use that manufacturer so I can't provide any specifics. My appliances all still use 2.5" SATA drives, so parts are far easier to source.

[tangofan]

I know I don't, it's garbage... no range, minimal configurability... the option simply sucks.

SDWan actually does a better job in that space, but it'll be a cold day in Satan's realm before I ever pay those extortion rates to use it. Seriously Untangle, I MERAKI is cheaper!

Amazon, Google, Apple, Unifi, all have superior products in this space that cost far less and perform far better.

Yep, after switching out my old Linksys EA6500 router (repurposed as a wireless access point) for a Ruckus-Unleashed R610, I'm beginning to appreciate what a "real" AP can do. E.g. stuff like having multiple SSIDs in different VLANs for segmented Wifi. And I'm only barely scratching the surface of that unit.

That's probably not news to the pros here, but for me - coming from consumer-grade stuff - having a decent wireless AP is amazing. And I'm coming to the conclusion that in morst cases having dedicated separate devices is much better than all-in-one devices (e.g. cable modem+router+wireless AP+coffee machine... ).

[sky-knight]

Convergence is great... but when it comes to WiFi it's blowing your foot off.

[tangofan]

Rob, - I agree with you (and more) but you didn't answer jcoehoorn's question I left for you to answer - so here are my thoughts on the repurposed SSD.

@jcoehoorn
Get the model number and Mfg. date on that take-out drive and scour the Interwebs for drive failures, bait-and-switch, and recalls. There were some spectacular ones!

I am not sure I would bother with Clonezilla, just do a fresh install (unless you want to tinker, to practice your skilz .

Beyond that, IMHO you should be good to go!

One thing I'm wondering about: Presumably you buy a brand-name appliance with the matching software to have a single point of support for both hardware and software. But when you swap hardware out (e.g. the SSD), wouldn't that ax the support on the hardware? Of course you can always swap the original SSD back in, but - at least in a commercial/professional setting - it would seem that you're giving up a large part of the benefit of having that brand-name appliance. Or am I missing something here?

[Jim.Alles]

One thing I'm wondering about: Presumably you buy a brand-name appliance with the matching software to have a single point of support for both hardware and software. But when you swap hardware out (e.g. the SSD), wouldn't that ax the support on the hardware? Of course you can always swap the original SSD back in, but - at least in a commercial/professional setting - it would seem that you're giving up a large part of the benefit of having that brand-name appliance. Or am I missing something here?

Well, you have a point (that I personally tend to ignore) but it is valid. Crack the seal on the case and you have lost the warranty. That warranty only lasts one year. If I were being conservative, I would wait that long. Other than a warranty, I don't consider support on that level of hardware to be a thing. There are no components that can be economically replaced- except RAM and a HDD, not even a power supply like on a desktop. The whole unit is going to get swapped rather than repaired.

I don't recall ever running across a true lemon with data processing hardware, where the smoke came out before I did something to it to cause that sort of thing.

This is one of the true advantages of running with Untangle - the Software isn't firmware that is married to any particular hardware. Sure things like LCD or Wi-Fi drivers are going to be persnickety, but the underlying Debian OS that is part of the package runs on a wide variety of hardware.

Not being an Untangle employee, I might be missing something, but the software subscription doesn't extend the hardware warranty anyway.

[tangofan]

Well, you have a point (that I personally tend to ignore) but it is valid.

Well, I must admit that I've done this myself from time to time, e.g. with my Synology NAS, where I added non-Synology RAM, a non-Synology 10G NIC and replaced the default fans with quieter Noctua ones. Of course, if there ever is a problem and Synology wants a remote connect, the first thing I'll need to do is to remove the 10G and switch back the RAM to the original one. And if that unit will ever get RMA'ed, the fans will need to be switched back as well.

Crack the seal on the case and you have lost the warranty. That warranty only lasts one year. If I were being conservative, I would wait that long. Other than a warranty, I don't consider support on that level of hardware to be a thing. There are no components that can be economically replaced- except RAM and a HDD, not even a power supply like on a desktop. The whole unit is going to get swapped rather than repaired.

I think I expressed myself badly before. I'm not worried about the warranty, at least in the U.S. these "Warranty void, when removed" stickers appear to be illegal (Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act of 1975) as would be any equivalent behavior.

But the concern is support, rather than warranty. When something breaks, you want the vendor to fix it and not say "Oh, it must be a hardware problem. But you don't run our box like we sold it, so we can't help you with that, so revert your hardware to standard and see, if it happens again." Not saying Untangle would do that, but they could.

This is one of the true advantages of running with Untangle - the Software isn't firmware that is married to any particular hardware. Sure things like LCD or Wi-Fi drivers are going to be persnickety, but the underlying Debian OS that is part of the package runs on a wide variety of hardware.

Yeah, in practice this might not be a concern, because they have an incentive to get their software running on all kinds of hardware and make sure that it runs there.

But then the question really becomes: What is the advantage of buying Untangle's hardware vs. any other generic firmware appliance? Ok, there is the matter of supporting Untangle, which makes sense (within reason). But leaving the cheap Chinese boxes aside for a moment, I understand that there are other alternatives, at least in the commercial/professional segment that can run Untangle well.

So it is upon Untangle to provide an attractive hardware offering and I'm glad to stay tuned for later this summer (as one post in this thread indicated). My current Protectli FWB6 box has an i5-7200U, 8GB RAM and a 240GB SSD and it is far overpowered for Untangle. So - depending on what the near future may bring - I'd be happy to repurpose that box as a Plex Media Server.

[hpaunet]

We do have some plans coming that will address some of the comments here. Good to see that we're going in the right direction, based on the points made in this thread. We'll post back once we get a little further along with some small but useful updates coming shortly.